In 2014, two Romanian men: 1. With no investment (worked for free from Starbucks).
- With no social media fans.
- With no email followers.
- Insufficient time (were freelancing full-time just to cover basic needs).
established their side-project, which they turned into a $17K/month business in 2 years.
Their full process is outlined here in detail:
Prior to the product-market fit
- They discovered they were repeatedly producing the same elements when building websites for clients.
- Produced a no-cost UI Kit.
- ProductHunt and Designer News both featured the UI. 2K–3K weekly users as a result.
- Designed a premium, for-pay version of the UI with more pages, elements, etc. Thus, $200 each week.
Following a product/market fit
- Developed new, free UI Kits and advertised them through Hackathons, Affiliate Programs, SEO, Niche Newsletters, Reddit, Product Hunt, Designer News, Hacker News, and Github.
- Promoted the premium paid version to consumers of the free version using an automated email sequence.
After two years, they were generating a net profit of $17,000 per month.
Alexandru Paduraru, a member of our community, is to be thanked for sharing your moving tale.
Source: freecodecamp.medium.com